India has conducted over a million coronavirus tests, says ICMR -- What is the significance of this number?

As of Sunday afternoon, India has conducted over a million tests, and has recorded over 40200 positive cases. Of these, 10886 people have been 'cured' and discharged, while 1306 people have died.

Till 9 am on May 3, the Indian Council of Medical Research said that it had tested a total of 10,46,450 samples.

There are at least 310 government laboratories and 111 private laboratories in the country, conducting the tests for the diagnosis of novel coronavirus disease, said the ICMR.

Speaking about the number of cases in the country, the Health Ministry had said that their numbers were being reconciled with the ICMR. As per the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare's website, 139 cases were being assigned to states for contact tracing.

This number however gains additional significance when taken in conjunction with the total number of cases recorded by India. One million tests is a milestone that not many countries have reached. The US for example, appears to have reached that particular number on March 30, going by a press conference held by President Trump. And according to a CNN report, by March 30th, the US had recorded over 160,000 coronavirus cases.

Similarly, Spain, which accordingly to Our World In Data had performed over 930,000 tests as of April 13 and 1.04 million tests by April 23, had also recorded over 182,000 cases. A Reuters article from mid-April put the total number of cases recorded as of April 15 at 182,816.

However, India's numbers are not amongst the best in this sense. To give an example, South Korea, one of the first countries to complete a million tests by March 2 had recorded approximately 3,730 cases at the time.